The Austrian Finance Minister, Maria Fekter, said to a newspaper that she will fight like a lion to protect the country's banking secrecy. She also promised to veto any steps that threaten the country's centuries-old tradition.

Greece can takeover the local units of Cypriot banks in a bid to protect its struggling banking system from the Cyprus financial crisis, a senior government official revealed.

The Greek branches of Cypriot banks remained closed on Tuesday and Wednesday, and will also remain closed on Thursday and Friday.

Deeming the bail amount of 100 million-euro excessive for the fraud allegations on Julius Meinl, 90% of the same will be returned to him after four years of his arrest.

Willibald Cernko, the CEO of Bank Austria, said that 2012 was tough year for the banking sector as the Bank has recorded net losses of _ 676m.

However, the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has showed profits of six percent before tax of _ 1.712bn as compared to 2011. Austria encountered economic slowdown in the previous years and had a big impact on customer business, asserted Cernko.

In a recently-released statement, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has confirmed that it has been targeted by "highly sophisticated online raids" two times till now; both the times in 2011.

Close on the heels of Germany's second-ranking lender Commerzbank's Friday announcement of a 716 million euros ($954 million) loss for the 2012 fourth quarter, the bank's CEO Martin Blessing said that he is neither asking for a bonus after a year of meagre profits, nor any dividend for shareholders.

It has happened for third time in last four months that Bank of Japan (BOJ) has expanded its asset-purchase program.

It seems that everything is going well with Spain, since the time the European Central Bank has pledged that they will support the debt ridden countries. It is the time, when Spain's borrowing cost also decline, which was at its peak in the summer.